


Raising the Ante

by Maverocknroll



Series: Notorious [6]
Category: Forgotten Realms, The Legend of Drizzt Series - R. A. Salvatore
Genre: F/M, I tried but it fought me, M/M, Multi, no actual smut, sassmasters, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-18 23:44:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22001800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maverocknroll/pseuds/Maverocknroll
Summary: Their travels bring Entreri and Jarlaxle back to Calimport, where Jarlaxle finally gets to meet Dwahvel. Unfortunately, the rest of the city is not as welcoming.
Relationships: Dwahvel/Artemis Entreri, Dwahvel/Artemis Entreri/Jarlaxle, Jarlaxle Baenre/Artemis Entreri
Series: Notorious [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1057391
Comments: 14
Kudos: 43
Collections: Welcome to Gayrûn





	Raising the Ante

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [Legend_of_the_D_kinkmeme](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Legend_of_the_D_kinkmeme) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> Jarlaxle finally has his long overdue meeting with the Queen of Sass herself, Dwahvel Tiggerwillies.
> 
> Artemis is regretting all the hours and days he spent bitching about his drow to her. 
> 
> And somehow, he's found himself in the middle of them, Jarlaxle making jokes about how climb-able he is while Dwahvel simply tells him to get on his knees.
> 
> Author's discretion on if the above is or isn't used. X'D

The night was dark but hardly still as Dwahvel Tiggerwillies looked out over Calimport. Shadows painted adobe-red buildings an inky black under a sky made velvet with clouds, but behind her the whispers were harsh and hurried. Her tea had grown cold on the windowsill, and she turned instead to the cabinet for something stronger. Little happened in this city that Dwahvel did not know, and she did not much like being surprised.

“You are certain?” asked Vinnan, her newest lieutenant.

“Deathly so,” was Faldal’s tremulous answer. Even in the candlelight, the young halfling had been white as a sheet when he’d staggered through the door.

It had taken the better part of half a candle to pry three sentences from him. The mark had seemed easy enough, he’d said: a pair of lovers, human and elf, and the elf wore a fine cloak and finer jewelry. It would be easy enough to snatch the man’s purse while the elf distracted him, twining an arm with his and cooing at the shiny baubles at a closing merchant’s stall. But Faldal’s fingers hadn’t found coin but the blade of a dagger, a dagger with a blood-red gem at the pommel.

Faldal had had the wisdom to run before he even saw the man’s face.

“Couldn’t be him,” said one of the others. “Faldal wouldn’t have any fingers left if he’d tried to steal from Artemis Entreri.”

Assenting murmurs followed, and Dwahvel nodded even though she knew better. Entreri would guess that the thief was one of hers, and he wouldn’t be foolish enough to alienate his greatest ally within the city, assuming already that he was foolish enough to even _return_ to this city.

But that elf… Dwahvel had heard Artemis gripe about Jarlaxle often enough to hazard a guess. With an expensive illusion, playing lovers would make a good cover for them both.

But why would they come back?

Too many unknowns. Dwahvel was careful, methodical, in her arrangement of the bottles, willing away the sudden flightiness of her fingers. Slow. Careful. Determinedly not thinking about the way Artemis’ hand had looked wrapped around a bottle of Moonshae Whiskey much like this one. He had strong fingers, she remembered. Elegant. A thrilling contrast to those cold, gray eyes.

“I suspect we will know soon enough,” she said.

“Lady?” Vinnan asked.

There was a humming in her blood, like she’d already sipped the drink in her hand. “If Artemis Entreri has indeed returned to Calimport, he will come here. In the meantime, we should prepare for trouble. It follows that man everywhere he goes, and as far as I know, there is still a bounty on his head.” She gestured at Vinnan with her glass, candlelight twinkling on the crystal and lighting the drink inside with an amber glow. “Make sure this news goes no further than our doors. And find out what other news is being whispered outside of them.”

This would be a long night, and yet Dwahvel smiled, setting out a bottle of Moonshae just in case.

“This city is so much more colorful than Heliogabalus, you know.” Jarlaxle’s feather bobbed as he turned his head this way and that. Entreri leaned away with tight-faced irritation to avoid getting that feather in the eye. “A most refreshing sight.”

“You speak like you have not been here before,” Entreri grumbled, adjusting his hood to keep the sun out of his eyes.

“Ah, but I had never the opportunity to walk the streets, _mal’ai_ , and certainly not in daylight!”

And Entreri grudgingly admitted he was right. Most buildings were a sand red, certainly, but long robes of dyed fabrics and scarves with intricate patterns was the current fashion, turning the marketday throng into a kaleidoscope of color. Yet while Jarlaxle watched the colors, Entreri watched the people, made note of the eyes that lingered on them too long or that passed over them too quickly. His grip was tight on the hilt of his dagger.

Jarlaxle held Entreri’s other arm hostage, pressing close as they walked. “You have not complimented me on my hair, you know.”

“Because it’s not real.”

“So?”

“So why would I compliment you?”

Jarlaxle made a show of tossing his golden curls over his shoulder, turning a face towards Entreri that was the right shape but entirely the wrong color as he fluttered his eyelashes. “I see. You prefer me all natural.”

“I prefer you silent.”

“Lies. You enjoy it when I’m loud.”

Entreri knew that smirk no matter what face Agatha’s Mask gave him. He answered it with a flat look of his own. “Not right now, I don’t.”

Jarlaxle’s thumb was distracting where it stroked Entreri’s bicep. “More lies,” Jarlaxle teased, that smirk curling higher.

“Your entire face is a lie right now. You do not get to talk.”

The air tasted of salt this close to the docks, as well as the heavy stink of fish. Vendors laid out rows of them in baskets, and Entreri ignored their proclamations of _fresh fish_ at _low prices_. He was used to being a passing shadow in the crowds, but the elf on his arm was a pageantry of color and glittering jewels, a sign to hopeful vendors—and to hapless pickpockets—that he had more coin than sense.

The vendors’ voices had melted into the background din by the time by the time Entreri’s eyes caught on a familiar wooden sign. Crisp letters in gold spelled out: THE COPPER ANTE.

It was like a giant’s hand were squeezing his ribs. He hadn’t expected that, for the weight of _memory_ to hit like a fist to the gut. Jarlaxle’s hand squeezed his arm.

“ _Abbil_?”

A blink, and Entreri realized he’d stopped. The tide of bodies broke against them and split, forking around them before continuing on their way.

“The paint is chipping,” he lied to cover his distraction, and Jarlaxle didn’t need the eyepatch to see through that. Entreri steered them towards the door.

“Indeed,” Jarlaxle said, playing along, “a prime opportunity to repaint the letters in a color more copper than gold. It’s all in the branding, you know. It is not the ‘Golden Ante’.”

“That might blend in with the wood.”

“Depends on the wood, but I suppose you are right. Easier to change the name, then.”

Entreri rolled his eyes as he tugged open the door. “Dwahvel will not rename her inn for the sake of a paint color. And certainly not for your vanity.”

It was hard for an elf and a human to be inconspicuous in a bar tended and attended only by halflings, but Dwahvel doubted this elf knew the meaning of the word anyway. A purple monstrosity of a hat nearly caught on the doorframe as he ducked into the _Copper Ante_ , a breeze ruffling the fat red plume that curled down around his neck.

“Ah!” he exclaimed, flashing her a gleaming smile as he swept off that hat and fanned himself with it dramatically. “‘Tis good to be out of the sun, at last!”

Dwahvel wondered how much enchantment had gone into those golden curls and fair, sun-tinged cheeks. It was a good illusion, she’d admit, and a strong one to have survived the detective magic in the room, strong enough to make her doubt.

“I doubt any of the sun actually hit you with that thing on your head,” came the rumble of a familiar voice, a voice Dwahvel would only admit to herself that she had missed. Entreri slipped into the tavern behind the elf, dark skin and clothing a contrast to the elf’s colorful pageantry. He hadn’t aged a day—unfair, really, considering the new touches of silver in the hair Dwahvel tucked behind her ear—and he looked… not _happy_ , not _relaxed_ , but the closest to either she’d ever seen from him.

Artemis felt her stare and looked up, catching her gaze from the other side of the room. Dwahvel made no apologies or excuses for the staring, and she knew she didn’t need to when he smiled.

Actually _smiled_.

Dwahvel cleared her throat, chided herself for the thrill of heat that ran through her at that look, and gestured for the waitress to take over for her at the bar.

Jarlaxle leaned into Entreri. “Mistress Tiggerwillies?” he asked in a whisper, as if he did not know.

“Yes,” Entreri said, distracted as he watched her, reality filling in the gaps that memory had left.

She was a short but full-figured woman, and she walked with purpose and a presence that filled the room. And Jarlaxle was aware that that room had eyes, hidden halfling guards around the tavern playing at casual, sipping at soup with one hand and reaching for a dagger with the other, a tenseness in their shoulders hinting at a battle readiness.

She paused in front of them with her hands on her hips.

“Dwahvel.”

“Artemis.”

Jarlaxle’s eyebrows twitched up. That short exchange told him everything he needed to know about their relationship. He’d never heard anyone else call Entreri “Artemis”.

“Jarlaxle,” Jarlaxle added belatedly, sweeping his hat off his head and his head into a bow. “Since it seems my dearest friend isn’t going to introduce me. Artemis, _mal’ai_ , how many times must I tell you that you should always introduce me to your pretty lady friends?” He offered Dwahvel a wink, feeling more than seeing Entreri’s eye-roll out of the corner of his eye.

“He has very many of those, does he?” Dwahvel asked with dry amusement.

“Certainly at least one. I suspect he would have more if he did less scowling and more smiling with that handsome face of his.” He patted Entreri on the cheek, and Dwahvel half-expected him to lose that hand.

“I might do less scowling if you do less talking.”

She had heard many such grumblings from him before, and it took Dwahvel a moment to realize that this was Entreri _teasing_. That and the way he accepted Jarlaxle’s casual touches told her everything _she_ needed to know about _their_ relationship.

“So what sort of trouble have you brought to my doorstep this time, Entreri?” The question was half tease, half warning. The last thing she’d ever wanted to see was another drow in Calimport.

The obvious joke was to gesture at Jarlaxle and say, _Only him,_ but Entreri doubted that would go over well, considering the very real trouble Jarlaxle had brought to them the last time he was here.

“None more than usual,” he assured her.

Dwahvel hummed. “Your ‘usual’ is what I’m afraid of. Still…” Despite the stern press of her lips, there was something warm in her brown eyes that felt like coming home. “It is good to see you alive. So what can I get you two?”

Dwahvel’s office had not changed much since the last time Entreri had been there. Her desk was still an elegant but sturdy block of carved ebony, taking up space where she didn’t. The red and gold carpet was new, and so was the presence of a third chair and a third body.

Dwahvel was much the same as well. Some of the highlights in her copper ringlets were silver now and her waistline was thicker, but her stare was still sharp and she was still beautiful. She also saw right through them both.

“That illusion is impressive, Jarlaxle, but not needed in this room.” She arched an eyebrow. “I already know you’re drow.”

“I think he is enjoying the illusion of hair,” Entreri drawled, accepting a glass of whiskey with a nod of thanks.

“I am perfectly capable of growing hair, I’ll have you know,” Jarlaxle huffed. But, in deference to their host, he slipped off his hat and mask in one movement, sliding the mask into his hat’s extradimensional pocket before Dwahvel could even see what it was. His skin turned ink black, and his golden ringlets melted into the air.

“Huh,” she said, eyeing the hat and revealing red vest. “I assumed the outfit was part of the illusion.”

“I think you mean you _hoped_ it was,” Entreri quipped, earning him a swat from the hat.

“So, Lady Tiggerwillies, it seems you have heard of me,” Jarlaxle said, replacing the hat on his head with a flourish. “My friend has told you only good things, I hope?”

“Honestly, from the way he spoke of you,” Dwahvel drawled, cautiously following the teasing tone of the conversation, “I thought he would have killed you in frustration before now.”

Entreri smirked. “The night is still young.”

“Just remember that if you get blood on my carpet, you’re cleaning it up.”

Jarlaxle chuckled, not at all put out by the casual threat. He understood Entreri’s language, it seemed, which led to uncomfortable thoughts about why a drow would understand this man better than most humans did.

And this drow was handsome, Dwahvel would admit, the kind of handsome that was difficult to look away from, with high cheekbones, a delicate jaw, and a crooked smile that was charmingly impish. His ink-black skin, red eye, and white eyelashes read as exotic, and somehow the clashing colors of his wardrobe seemed to _work_ on him. And Jarlaxle was aware of his attractiveness to go by the preening way he adjusted the hat on his head.

He was a study in contrasts next to Entreri, all smiles, color, and charm next to Entreri’s black armor, black cloak, and black looks. Entreri was no less handsome, but he was more content to go unnoticed. Dwahvel filed away that piece of information with the rest, sketching an appraisal of the drow in her mind, filling it out with what Entreri had told her years ago.

Their chairs were close enough that their knees almost touched. Another hint that they weren’t merely play-acting at lovers. Dwahvel filed that away as well, though it stuck on its way into her mental folder. She pretended she didn’t know why.

“So,” she said, sitting on the edge of her desk rather than across from it, a cool drink in hand. “You’re alive.” Sitting, her feet dangled off the ground, and for once, she looked down to address Artemis. A flit of her gaze brought Jarlaxle into the statement as well.

“So it would appear,” Entreri drawled, “despite Jarlaxle’s best efforts to get us both killed in new and interesting ways.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want you to get bored nearly dying in more mundane ways!”

“Of course not.”

“Why did you come back?” To anyone else, the tone of her question would seem harsh—from the way Entreri hesitated, maybe it still did—but these two had made a mess of the city the last time they were here.

“Perhaps I simply wanted to return home.”

“I would not have taken you for sentimental, Artemis.”

“I missed the food.”

Dwahvel couldn’t quite wrestle back a smile at that. “Well. I wouldn’t be a halfling if I couldn’t relate to that. Perhaps a little too well, at times.”

“You would hate Damara,” Entreri went on. Sunlight caught his eyes in a way that made them look like silver behind polished glass. “They boil everything.”

Jarlaxle sighed and fanned himself with his hat. “As opposed to here, where the sun does that for you.”

“I will boil _you_ next,” Entreri grumbled.

“Now, now, _mal’ai_ , there are far better ways to get me hot and bothered.”

Entreri met Jarlaxle’s stare with a flat look. Jarlaxle just smiled and fluttered his eyelashes.

Dwahvel hid a snicker behind a drink of wine.

“In seriousness, however, I fear this heat is a bit much for me,” Jarlaxle said, and when he put the hat back on his head, suddenly his skin was pale again and golden curls fell back to his shoulders. “You said there is a room available? On the top floor?”

“Far end of the hall,” Dwahvel said with a nod. “The only one with a human-sized bed. Or drow-sized, I suppose, in this instance.”

Jarlaxle rose, tipped his hat. He hardly looked overwhelmed by the heat, and Entreri’s lack of concern told her plenty. Jarlaxle set his own wine glass back on her desk. “Then I thank you for your hospitality, good lady. I will be upstairs if you need me, Artemis.” Jarlaxle winked at Entreri, trailing a hand over his shoulder as he passed by.

The click of the door behind him made the following silence seem heavy. Artemis looked up at her, and Dwahvel wondered if maybe the heat was a bit much after all.

Entreri cleared his throat. “You still have your protections from scrying active, yes?”

“Of course,” Dwahvel said warily. “Why?”

Entreri sighed and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Jarlaxle is too curious for anyone’s good.”

“You think he means to spy on us?”

“I think he means to see if he can.”

“Why?”

“Because he has the opportunity.”

“And when he finds that he can’t?”

Entreri shrugged. “Then he will find something else to amuse himself.”

A drow in need of amusement did not put Dwahvel at ease. “Do I need to have someone keep an eye on him?”

Entreri chuckled. “I am sure he is expecting you to. But I think we have a few hours, at least, before we need to worry about him instigating another guild war.”

“Wonderful,” Dwahvel grumbled with a shake of her head. She cupped her glass in her hands. “And now you will tell me why you are really here?”

Entreri’s gaze dropped down and to the side, an unusual show of uncertainty. “I had some… unfinished business, in the area.”

That was code for: _there was someone I needed to kill_. That Dwahvel hadn’t heard about it said he’d done the job well. Although there’d been rumors about an incident in Memnon, but… no. That had been vicious even by Artemis’ standards.

Entreri’s fingers toyed with the rim of his glass. “And as I needed to pass through Calimport, I did not think you would be pleased if I paid for drinks at what would certainly be an inferior tavern.”

“Charmer,” Dwahvel teased. She told herself the warm glow in her stomach was from the wine and not his smile. “Is my displeasure that big of a motivator?”

“Yes.”

He said it so simply, so guilelessly, that it took a moment to register.

“So you _are_ sentimental,” Dwahvel said with a crooked smile.

“Only when it comes to Moonshae whiskey,” Artemis replied. “And… you.”

Dwahvel felt a flush rise to her cheeks. “Artemis…”

“Dwahvel—”

“You and Jarlaxle, hmm?” Suddenly the air wasn’t so hot so much as it wasn’t there at all. It was a long time since a man, any kind of man, could pull that kind of reaction from her.

Artemis swallowed back whatever he had been about to say, before scraping a simple, “Yes,” off the back of his throat.

“I’ll admit, I _had_ wondered,” she teased gently. “You were rather, ah… _fixated_ , as I recall.”

“ _Fixated_?” Entreri balked, and that was the closest to flustered she had ever seen him.

“Oh yes.” Dwahvel grinned. “I could never quite tell if you wanted to kill the man or ravish him. I guess it was a bit of both.”

“It’s always a bit of both, with him,” Artemis grumbled, not quite meeting her stare now.

“He sounds like quite a ride.” Dwahvel’s smirk and the arch of one eyebrow turned her meaning lewd. She watched in fascination and delight as his face flushed a deep red. She would forever count that as a personal victory: the woman who had made Artemis Entreri _blush_.

“Yes. Well.” Entreri cleared his throat, shooting her a glare without heat. “You could probably find out for yourself if you wanted to.”

Dwahvel blinked. “Oh?”

Entreri sighed and rolled his eyes to the ceiling again. “He asked me, charmingly, if you had ever _climbed_ me before. And when I said ‘no’, he expressed an interest in seeing it happen.”

A laugh burst out of Dwahvel before she could hide it behind her hand. “Is that what he was hoping to scry?”

“I… probably yes, knowing him.”

“Well, you can tell him he can have a front row seat, as long as he returns the favor.”

Entreri stared at her, glass halfway to his lips. “As long as… _what_?”

Dwahvel shrugged, cheeks dimpling with an impish smile. “What? You are both healthy, attractive men.” She let her gaze trail over his body, not for the first time wondering what it looked like under the leathers. “Jarlaxle isn’t the only one who gets curious.”

Entreri just continued to stare at her.

“Are you well?” she asked, enjoying this far too much. “You haven’t blinked for a long time.”

Entreri made a strangled sound before downing the rest of his whiskey in one go. “I’m… going to check on Jarlaxle. All this sun is dangerous for drow.”

Dwahvel casually sipped at her wine as Entreri all but bolted, swallowing back her laughter until the door had shut behind him. She filed away that reaction as well, amazed.

Jarlaxle had just given up his last scrying attempt when the door slammed open and Entreri stormed into the room. Artemis grabbed him by the vest and pulled him up into a kiss harsh enough to knock the hat off his head.

“ _Abbil—_?”

“I just realized what my ‘type’ is, and it’s your damn fault.”

Dwahvel was just closing down the tavern for the night when she heard boots on the stairs. She knew it wasn’t Artemis before she even looked—he didn’t make a sound when he walked—and when she looked up, it was to see Jarlaxle smiling at her through his disguise, tipping that ridiculous hat.

“Closing shop so soon?” he asked, leaning a hip against the bar.

“The sun will be up in a few hours,” she drawled. “I think that’s plenty soon.” She was tired, the kind of strung-out that comes at the end of a long day, but she could tell Jarlaxle wanted something. “If you want a drink, you have five seconds to order it.”

“If you have more of that lovely white wine from before, I would not mind another glass. Put up your feet and have a drink with me?”

Dwahvel smothered a yawn behind her hand and dismissed her guards and the servers turning up the chairs and putting out the lanterns. She wasn’t naïve enough to think that they could help if Jarlaxle turned out to be a threat. The phantom of Entreri’s wrath was, she suspected, a greater motivator.

“A drink alone by candlelight,” she said. “A lady might get ideas, you know.” She pulled out the bottle and glasses more by touch than sight, the room narrowed to the glow of the lantern beside her.

“Perhaps I want her to,” Jarlaxle said with a wink—and how was he able to wink like that while wearing an eyepatch? …moreover, wasn’t that eyepatch on the other eye earlier?

Dwahvel let out an indelicate snort. “Hoping I will ‘climb’ you?”

That startled a laugh out of Jarlaxle. He took a glass with a nod of thanks. “Artemis told you about that, did he?”

Dwahvel circled the bar to take a seat next to Jarlaxle, letting out a relieved sigh at finally being able to rest her feet. “Oh yes.”

“He cares for you, you know,” Jarlaxle said, folding up his long legs to sit at the halfling-proportioned bar.

Dwahvel’s smile twisted into something wry. The wine winked gold in the lantern light. “As much as someone like him is able to care for someone?”

“Is that qualifier necessary?”

“Is a drow translator necessary?”

Jarlaxle tipped his head, conceding the point.

“But,” she said, lingering for a moment on that word. “I know.”

Dwahvel still had the letter Artemis had written her, the last words she ever thought she’d hear from him. She’d read it many times in those first few days, days made long and empty from his absence, and then she’d tucked the letter into the chest where she hid her other memories, under a faded quilt hand-stitched by her mother and, fittingly or ill-fittingly, next to a copper ring that had belonged to her cousin Dondon. The ache in her chest she’d tucked away as well, only to be excavated now, years later, sitting next to the drow Artemis had risked everything for.

Dwahvel wondered now at her own bitterness. Artemis was a human and she a halfling, and there were a great many things between them besides the physical distance. But she supposed there was always something enticing in the “what if”, something romantic in the “almost”, but she and Artemis had never been the romantic type.

Jarlaxle watched her with one sharp, red eye.

“If things had been different,” he said, making Dwahvel wonder, for a moment, if he had read her mind, “if Artemis had stayed here, if I’d kept my meddling to Menzoberranzan…” The curl of Jarlaxle’s smile was sharp, like a sickle blade.

“I don’t dwell on ‘ifs’, Jarlaxle,” she lied.

“Sure you do. You must have a rich imagination for your guild to flourish so.” He raised his glass to her.

Dwahvel didn’t trust his compliments.

“And I am only asking you to dwell for a moment,” he went on. “If you will so indulge me, kind lady.”

She didn’t trust his politeness, either. “I suppose that would depend on Artemis.”

Jarlaxle’s smile curled higher, leaving Dwahvel wondering if she had failed or passed the test he’d put to her. “A safe answer.”

“Why?” she demanded in turn. “If you are trying to figure out if I’m a threat, you really should be asking him.”

“A threat?” Jarlaxle chuckled. “Hardly. Our bed is big enough for a beautiful halfling to join us. You need but say the word, and you can climb one or both of us. You _have_ climbed a human before, yes?”

“No,” she said, meeting his stare head-on. “Because I don’t ‘climb’. They _kneel_. And right now, the word is ‘no’.”

“Why?”

“Because you have not answered my question.”

“Which was?”

“What is your interest in me? In my relationship with Artemis?”

Jarlaxle shrugged as though he hadn’t really thought about it. “Curiosity, mostly. Artemis thinks highly of you. He does not think highly of most people.”

“That is putting it mildly,” she drawled.

“Exactly.” Another flash of that too-perfect grin. “It is good for him, to have someone to care about. To have someone who cares about him.”

Dwahvel raised an eyebrow. “Implying you don’t?”

“Implying I can’t be all that he has.” His voice turned softer, and for the first time, Dwahvel caught a glimpse of who he was behind his _real_ mask. “Humans handle these things differently than drow. They handle them better, even, or at least generally. Drow trust no one but themselves.”

“You are drow,” Dwahvel pointed out.

“I am hardly a _normal_ drow,” he countered. “Just as Artemis is hardly a normal human. I like to hope the sum of our parts evens that out.”

“So…” Dwahvel drew out the word. “You’re a drow, trying to make his human lover more… human… by coming to a halfling?”

“When you say it like that, I admit it sounds odd.”

“Much of what you’ve said tonight does.”

Jarlaxle’s laughter rang with approval. “I can see why he likes you.”

“Charmer.”

“Always.” Jarlaxle grinned. “For the record, I would gladly kneel.”

Another of those impossible winks, and this time Dwahvel was the one flushing. A study in contrasts, he and Artemis.

“So is your curiosity sated, then?” she asked.

“Never, good lady,” Jarlaxle assured her. “Never.”

An opportunist, Artemis had called Jarlaxle once, his voice somewhere between acidic and admiring. Perhaps he would come all this way for Artemis, but not _just_ for Artemis.

“You’re angling for a business opportunity,” Dwahvel said the moment the realization had crystalized. His previous set-up with the Basadoni Guild had been lucrative, to go by Artemis’ hints, and he hadn’t been around to witness the mess he’d left in his wake.

Jarlaxle shrugged, his sheepishness clearly all show. “I admit, the idea had occurred to me.”

“Well, let it pass back out of your head. It is not happening.”

“Ah, you are quick with your denials tonight…”

“And any night,” Dwahvel said, holding firm. “Your meddling, as you called it, nearly destroyed this city— _my_ city.”

Jarlaxle held up a hand in surrender. “I have no desire to take your guild out from under you, Mistress Tiggerwillies. But I might be interested in trading with you.”

Dwahvel narrowed her eyes, “Trading with me?”

“Information can be more valuable than gold, in the right hands.”

Dwahvel folded her arms across her chest. “And you think yours are the ‘right hands’?”

“I think they are the paying kind of hands.” A twist of his wrist, and a coin appeared between his fingers, the candlelight burnishing the gold edges red. “I am simply asking to be one of your many clients. My curiosity is never sated, as I said before.”

“I make no promises,” Dwahvel said, eyeing him and the coin. “If there is something specific you wish to know, I can find it out. But I can also decide to refuse your coin and not share it with you.”

“Of course,” Jarlaxle agreed, “though such a refusal would only pique my interest.” He slid the coin across the table. “For the drink and pleasant company.”

That sounded like a dismissal, and the way Jarlaxle unfolded to his feet said it was. But Dwahvel was not done with him.

“And what is your interest in _him_?”

Jarlaxle arched one delicate eyebrow. “What isn’t my interest?” Innocent-sounding words that took on a lewd meaning just from the curl of his smile.

The tightening press of Dwahvel’s lips said that wasn’t an answer, though she wondered at herself the next moment, feeling protective of the most infamous assassin on the Sword Coast.

“You said yourself that Artemis does not hold many in high regard,” Dwahvel said tactfully.

“Yes.”

“He seems to hold _you_ in high regard.”

Jarlaxle tilted his head. “My good Lady Tiggerwillies, are you asking what my _intentions_ are with Artemis?”

Dwahvel hesitated, stopping herself from outright denying that. “Assassins of his caliber are made, not born,” she said, answering without answering. “And…” She hesitated, took a sip to justify the pause.

Jarlaxle leaned a hip against the bar, studying her with one ruby-red eye. “And you know that assassins of his caliber aren’t made by living happy lives.”

Dwahvel nodded.

“How much do you know?” Jarlaxle asked with a tilt of his head. There was no humor in his voice now, no mask except for the literal one he wore.

“About…?”

“His life? Before he came to Calimport.”

Dwahvel sputtered a moment, searching back but… “Nothing.”

Jarlaxle leaned back, blinking like he was reassessing something. “Huh.”

“How… much do _you_ know?” Dwahvel asked carefully.

Jarlaxle sighed, his entire being sagging. He toyed with his empty wine glass. “Enough to know that, sometimes, humans are as inventive with their tortures as drow.”

Dwahvel’s heart sank into her stomach.

“You are worried for him?” he asked.

When Dwahvel hesitated again, Jarlaxle chuckled.

“Good,” he said.

Dwahvel narrowed her eyes. “Good?”

“You care for him too. This would have been extremely awkward if we’d come here to find it was only one-sided.”

“Implying it isn’t already awkward,” Dwahvel drawled.

“It doesn’t have to be,” Jarlaxle insisted. “You want him, he wants you, I want you both, and everyone wants _me_. The math is fairly simple.”

“Are you always this humble?”

“Do you disagree?”

“That _everyone_ wants you? Yes.”

“I got Artemis Entreri into bed, didn’t I? Can you name a more difficult subject?”

Dwahvel had to concede that point.

“Sleep on it,” Jarlaxle said, again pushing away from the counter. “Have sweet dreams of Artemis Entreri ‘kneeling’, as you put it.”

Dwahvel made the mistake of picturing exactly that, too distracted to notice that Jarlaxle’s boots made no sound on his way back up the stairs.

The light was cold in the morning. The sun hadn’t yet soaked into the mud-brick when Jarlaxle found Artemis on the roof, and it was all the excuse he needed to sit close, burrowing into the heat of his side. And Entreri shifted, the barest turn of his shoulder making an invitation only Jarlaxle knew how to read, and he gave no complaint as Jarlaxle slipped an arm around his waist.

For once, Jarlaxle didn’t break the silence, merely looked out over the city with Entreri warm and solid at his side. The sky was vast and blue enough to hurt, and in the light, the buildings across the street looked gray and cracked, uneven striations of stonework marking the remnants of older structures that had gotten swallowed up in the city’s expansion. The streets already teemed with life and racket, and to Jarlaxle, it was a city bloated.

Strange, that he had lived here many months, and yet he felt like he’d never seen it at all. How much of his mind had the Crystal Shard swallowed while he’d held it?

He thought of that day in the desert, Artemis’ life in—and blood on—his hands.

“I wonder,” Jarlaxle said, because even Entreri knew the silence couldn’t last, “is it the city that has changed, or have we?”

Entreri took his time responding, adjusting grudgingly to the loss of stillness. “It is the nature of cities to be always changing,” he said, morning giving his voice an extra roughness.

“But not the nature of people?”

Entreri sighed through his nose. “You are awfully philosophical for before breakfast.”

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

“How do you know it’s the city that has changed?”

“Because that’s what they do,” Entreri said, on the edge of impatient. “They change in increments. One brick at a time, one building, street, at a time. You barely notice the shift, but then you look away and look back and barely recognize where you are anymore.”

Entreri’s voice was just flat enough to be nostalgic. Jarlaxle wondered what he saw—or didn’t see—as he looked out over the city that had been his home.

“And you think people don’t do the same? If you met the you from ten, twenty years ago, would you recognize yourself?”

“Would you?”

“Well, the hat helps.”

Entreri’s lips twitched towards amusement. “I think,” he murmured, “that some things don’t change no matter where you look.”

His eyes had locked on something—or someone, he realized as he followed that stare.

“Faldal, isn’t it?” Jarlaxle asked, eyeing the halfling scurrying through the crowd, a flash of sandy hair among everyone else’s shoulders. “Plying his trade?”

Entreri hummed distantly. “Usually pickpockets don’t put things _into_ people’s pockets.” His frown was tight, the edge of murderous.

“Dwahvel trades in information, does she not?” Jarlaxle asked. “Perhaps that is what this is.”

“She trades with information _in her tavern_.” Entreri slid out from under Jarlaxle’s arm and to his feet, silent as a shadow.

“Ah, now it feels like coming home.”

In her office, Dwahvel was more composed but barely less furious, not letting her lieutenant’s protests slow her letter-writing.

“But word has spread, Mistress—”

“Word does that, Vinnan,” Dwahvel said with a schoolteacher’s patience, calm, pleasant, but with a steel edge that reminded him to toe the line. “Entreri is a guest. He is not working for us, and we are not ‘harboring’ him.”

Vinnan’s lips pressed thin, the creases between his brows and bracketing his lips etched deep. “Yet you expect no violence to come to or from him while he is here?”

“That is the current understanding we have with the guilds, to everyone’s benefit.” Dwahvel set down her quill. Ink was sticky where it had seeped between her fingers. “They would not be foolish enough to break such an agreement.”

“They might consider the agreement already broken, Mistress.”

Dwahvel’s jaw clenched as she turned to look out the window, no answer ready at her lips. It was easy to argue, to plant her feet. Less easy was acknowledging that he was right. She knew the worth of information better than anyone, knew that that information didn’t have to be true or accurate to hold weight.

“And you think it wiser to kick out Artemis Entreri?” she asked, tone hitting the right level of disbelief to make Vinnan pause and backpedal.

“Better he be an ally than an enemy, true. But even he would understand that you can’t be an ally to _him_ if your guild is razed to the ground.”

There was a cold ball tightening in the pit of her stomach. “You exaggerate.”

“Do I? The man brings ruin to everything he touches.”

Anger bubbled like fire up her throat. “Your concerns are acknowledged, Vinnan. Thank you.” Her tone was coldly polite, a dismissal.

Vinnan opened his mouth to argue, but Dwahvel stilled him with a look before she picked up her quill again. He bowed his head. “Lady.” And slipped out of the room.

Dwahvel sat back in her heavy chair and tossed the quill back onto her desk. She’d thought she was done with all her Entreri-related headaches, yet here she was. “Damn.”

Dwahvel passed the docks, the sea air heavy with salt, the cry of gulls undercutting the cacophony of the crowd. Majd’s shop was a few streets over, and she opted to check in on her commission—a set of barstools in the florid Waterdhavian style that was currently in fashion—as an excuse to leave the pressing walls of her guildhouse.

The door to Majd’s workshop was propped open to clear out the air thick with sawdust and varnish, and she found the half-elf bent over a lathe, long fingers delicate on the crank. Wood chips had caught in his sparse, patchy beard, and his smile when he saw her was a delayed, forced thing.

“Mistress Tiggerwillies!” he said. “What a pleasant surprise!”

_Liar_ , she thought, and a glance around his shop told her why. In a corner, another man was admiring the cane work on a set of chairs, a man she knew too well. He had a gleaming bald pate and a well-trimmed goatee, an ugly, jagged scar cutting through one eye and twisting through his jaw. A former jewel thief who had taken advantage of the chaos Jarlaxle and Artemis had plunged the city into. Sahem, the current pasha of the nearly wrecked Basadoni Guild.

There had always been an air of menace around the man, the sort of cool self-assurance Dwahvel had always associated with Entreri. This man was a pale imitation, but he was not the sort of man Dwahvel would turn her back to, especially not now.

Especially not when she suspected she was the reason he was here.

“Good morning, Majd,” Dwahvel greeted her friend cheerfully, pretending not to notice Sahem, who did much the same with her. “I just came to see how the stools are coming along?”

“Very nicely,” Majd said, his fingers drumming an anxious rhythm on the lathe’s handle. “I have one finished I can show you, if you but wait a moment.”

Majd scurried off just out of sight, behind a jungle of carved wooden furniture parts, and Dwahvel felt more than saw Sahem approach, the glide of a shadow at the edge of her vision.

“Mistress Tiggerwillies,” Sahem said in a voice deceptively soft.

“I would skip the small talk, Sahem,” Dwahvel said with a smile that was equally deceptive. “We both know what you want to talk to me about, and Majd can only believably be gone for a few minutes.”

Sahem chuckled. “You do not mince words, do you?”

“I do not enjoy wasting anyone’s time, particularly mine.”

“Very well.” Sahem gave up all pretense of studying the woodwork in front of him and instead turned to face Dwahvel, hands clasped at his back. “You are living dangerously, halfling.”

Insult was sharp and hot down Dwahvel’s spine. “Address me by my name or not at all.”

“Mistress Tiggerwillies, then. Harboring Entreri was not the wisest move you have made.”

“I ‘harbor’ no one,” Dwahvel replied. “He is a paying guest in my inn, just as anyone else. I expect no violence to come to any within my walls, as per our agreement, but outside of them, he, like anyone else, has to fend for himself.”

Sahem’s smile was a small, secret thing. “I thought you didn’t like wasting time.”

“I don’t.”

“Then why keep up the pretense that he is just another customer?”

“He is.”

“You would have turned away anyone else who would have caused you this much trouble.”

“And you think it would have been wise to refuse Artemis Entreri?”

“Yes.” At Dwahvel’s raised eyebrow, Sahem added, “Better to upset one dangerous man than a city full of them, don’t you think?”

“You might think differently with that one dangerous man at your back,” a familiar voice growled. Where Sahem had slid out of the shadows, Artemis seemed birthed out of them, shedding the darkness like a second skin. The way Sahem stiffened said he hadn’t seen Entreri either. “You always were gutless, Sahem. If you have a quarrel with me, then I am the one you should be addressing.”

“I only—”

“Are you concerned for your position? For your life?” Entreri circled him like a tiger eyeing prey, and Dwahvel took some grim satisfaction in the way Sahem’s composure frayed at the edges. “Rest assured, if I wanted either, I would have already taken it from you. Luckily for you, I find you more of an annoyance than a threat.”

“I—”

“Get out.” Every inch of Entreri exuded disgust. “I will not be staying in Calimport long, and I expect you not to bother Mistress Tiggerwillies in the meantime.”

Sahem’s lips pressed thin, his face tight in a grimace. The teeth of a wood saw glinted, enticingly close to his hand, but he wisely didn’t pick it up. “I would hardly consider a friendly conversation between guild masters ‘bothering’, but so long as your visit is, in fact, short and uneventful, I see no reason to repeat this discussion.

Bold words, but Dwahvel watched the way the man all but slunk out the door.

The burning anger in Entreri’s eyes calmed to a simmer as he turned to Dwahvel. She folded her arms across her chest, tight-jawed and unimpressed.

“What?” Entreri prompted at that look.

“I neither need nor want you fighting my battles for me, Entreri.”

“It was about me—!”

“It was about your presence _in my inn_. It was about the repercussions _my_ guild would face.”

“Because of my presence!”

“Because of my decision to allow your presence!”

Entreri raised an eyebrow.

Dwahvel pursed her lips, glancing at the tangle of furniture Majd had yet to reappear from. “Because some people are paranoid that you and I are more friendly than guildmistress and guest, which you have just proven to be the case.”

Entreri’s jaw muscles fluttered, and the way his gaze canted to the side conceded the point.

“Did you follow me here?” Dwahvel asked.

“I followed _him_.”

That drew Dwahvel up short. “Why?”

A subtle shake of his head said this wasn’t the place to discuss it. Dwahvel studied his face for a long moment, one of the few who could bear Entreri’s eye-contact for so long. Arms folded, she drummed the fingers of one hand.

“I’ll come by tomorrow, Majd,” she called out. “You don’t need to work so hard looking for those stools.”

“Y… yes, Mistress Tiggerwillies,” Majd answered, peeking his head out from where he’d settled in to hide.

With a glare and a warning smile, Dwahvel slid an arm through Entreri’s and nudged him towards the door. He blinked down at her hand but did not shake it off as they stepped out onto the street.

“I thought you didn’t want us to appear ‘friendly’?”

Dwahvel sighed and shrugged. “Yes, well. Too late for that now, and I figure that, if you’re going to make a statement, you might as well make a bold one.”

They returned to the _Copper Ante_ to find Jarlaxle leaning back in Dwahvel’s desk chair, casually threatening as he twirled a dagger over his knuckles.

“Ah! At last!” Jarlaxle dropped his feet from Dwahvel’s desk just as she reached over to shove them off. “I was wondering when you would join us!”

At the word “us”, Dwahvel looked around, finally spotting Faldal shivering in the corner. Hope brightened in his eyes at the sight of her, only for him to cringe and look away.

Dwahvel gritted her teeth against another surge of anger—and fear, since she knew better than to lie to herself and these were still dangerous men. “ _Now_ will someone tell me what is going on?”

“Of course!” said Jarlaxle brightly as the door clicked shut behind Entreri. With the dagger, he gestured at Faldal who whimpered and cringed again. “I’m sure dear Faldal here would love to have the honors.”

But Faldal simply sputtered, and Jarlaxle’s smile was all teeth.

“No?” he taunted. “Here I thought you’d like the chance to explain yourself.”

Entreri sighed and slipped a scrap of paper out of a pocket inside his cloak. Callused fingers brushed Dwahvel’s as he handed it to her.

“Your room number?” she asked, rubbing at the gathering tension between her eyes. More than a room number—it named which window went with that room. At Entreri’s nod, she pressed, “I’m assuming you didn’t write this yourself because of an aging memory?”

“I pickpocketed it off Sahem.”

“Of course you did,” Dwahvel sighed. “Faldal?”

“A-all he wanted was the room number,” Faldal sputtered. “‘Just to keep an eye’, he said. The pay was good, and it seemed simple.”

“Betrayal often is,” Entreri muttered.

Faldal threw him a black look. “I don’t work for _you_!”

“No, but you work for _me_ ,” Dwahvel reminded him. “And you know this was woefully inappropriate, at _best_. You could have brought a guild war to our doorstep.”

“I was only—”

“Get out. Please. I think it best you find employment elsewhere.”

Dwahvel was as still and cold as stone as Faldal sputtered but ultimately obeyed. Jarlaxle watched him leave, the light hitting his eyes in a way that gave them a red glow.

“A drow would have killed him,” he pointed out.

“Well, that’s not how I do things,” Dwahvel said sharply.

“Good.” His smile looked dangerous, with that red-eyed glow. “The drow are drow enough.”

“I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean.”

“It means I respect a person who is not afraid to be merciful when the situation calls for it. Don’t you agree, Artemis?”

Entreri hummed something noncommittal and unenthused. There was a sort of emptiness behind his anger when she looked at him, something she hadn’t seen in him before. She’d seen him desperate, but even that desperation had had a focus.

“So what do you plan to do?” Dwahvel asked, voice subdued.

“As I told Sahem, it was never my intention to stay long.”

Dwahvel wondered how true that was.

“This is hardly worth starting a guild war over.”

“I see,” she murmured. “How long do you plan to stay?”

“We’ll leave tomorrow.” He said it frankly, like he was setting out on another mission, not leaving again, for good. The air felt thick at that thought, but she acknowledged, just as frankly, that was the least disastrous choice.

Entreri was all coiled tension as he circled his adversary, sunlight catching the edge of the dagger in his hand. His eyes burned with adrenaline, his stare predatory in a way that always sent Jarlaxle’s blood running south, but Jarlaxle forced himself to focus, at least for a few more minutes.

The man had some aggression to burn off, and, more than that, he had some issues to work through, the sort he only knew how to approach with a blade in his hand.

Entreri’s thrust turned into a feint, Jarlaxle’s dodge into a grapple.

“Was it truly your intention to leave this soon?” Jarlaxle asked in Artemis’ ear. He would certainly be happy to put the desert behind him, but he was more interested in peeling away Entreri’s thoughts. And potentially his clothes, but that was later.

The stab of a dagger for his gut was particularly vicious, forcing Jarlaxle to disengage, roof tiles clattering underfoot. “Does it matter?”

“It matters a little.”

It was tempting fate, fighting on these rooftops. Out in the open. Exposed. The Copper Ante was a shorter building than their apartment in Heliogabalus had been, and it would be simple enough for Sahem to send an archer after them. Jarlaxle half hoped he would, just to spice up the afternoon.

Arrows wouldn’t do much against a stoneskin enchantment anyway.

He and Entreri went back to circling. “Two days in my home,” Entreri said, that predator’s stare still fixed on Jarlaxle, “and I’ve already outlived my welcome.”

“Well,” said Jarlaxle, “that usually happens to me after two hours, so.”

Steel rang as Jarlaxle batted aside Charon’s Claw with a dagger.

“Let me guess,” Jarlaxle sighed. “Just as I have outlived my welcome in this conversation?”

“After two minutes.”

“Two glorious minutes.”

“And yet, you’re still talking.”

“Well, I’m merely interested in the nature of—”

“I thought we were sparring.”

“I can multitask.”

Entreri sighed, rubbed his forehead with his knuckles, jeweled dagger still in hand. His shoulders sagged, the fight going out of him. Jarlaxle twisted the daggers in his hands and watched for another feint.

“Well,” Jarlaxle said just to break the silence. “If you’re no longer interested in sparring, we could—”

“We are not having sex on the roof.”

Jarlaxle laughed helplessly and shrugged. “Probably for the best. I have enough sand in unmentionable places, and these tiles look like they’d be murder on the knees.”

Artemis gave him a flat look. “And it’s in public,” he drawled, gesturing with his dagger.

“So?”

“‘ _So’_?”

“I’m certain the neighbors would appreciate the show. I suspect Dwahvel would as well.”

Entreri’s expression sank into a scowl. Shaking his head, he sheathed both weapons, and only then did Jarlaxle approach, stepping lightly over clay tiles and side-stepping the ones that looked loose. His daggers slid back into his bracers.

“Does it pain you, leaving your home again?”

“I’m not certain this was ever my home,” Entreri grumbled, looking out at the docks, his gaze only finding Jarlaxle when the drow was close enough to touch.

Jarlaxle just studied him, searched Artemis’ face for the answers he kept sidestepping and finding only that same hollowness Dwahvel had puzzled over earlier, the same hollowness that had lain behind his eyes since they came south.

Entreri shook his head again. “What do you want?” He sounded tired.

“To know what _you_ want. You came here looking for something. A home, perhaps? A place to belong?”

“Jarlaxle…” Entreri turned away, thumbing open his water skein and taking a drink, hoping Jarlaxle would take that as a signal to end this conversation.

He didn’t. He never did.

“You want to settle down, is that it? Raise a couple of devilishly handsome, half-drow children?”

Entreri nearly choked on the water and hid it behind a cough. “I don’t think you quite have a grasp on how anatomy works.”

“Nonsense! I grasp _your_ anatomy quite often.”

Entreri just sighed.

“Still,” Jarlaxle pressed. “You’re thinking of the ‘what if’, aren’t you?”

Entreri didn’t respond, merely stared out at nothing.

“Perhaps half-halfling children? Would that make them three-quarterlings?”

“What is the point of this, Jarlaxle?” Entreri snapped.

“The point is that you are _missing_ something, and I would like to figure out what.”

“What I am missing, no one can ever give.”

Jarlaxle scooted a bit closer, puzzling that out in his head. “This is still about Memnon, yes?”

“About what it represents.”

Despair crept over things like a film, and Artemis could feel it sticking to his fingers, to everything he touched. The tilt of Jarlaxle’s head said he was still trying to disentangle that.

“The only family you’ve ever known,” he said cautiously.

Artemis gritted his teeth hard enough to break.

“And that… makes you doubt you can have one?”

“Not everyone gets to have that life. Not everyone _should_ have that life.”

“But do you _want_ that life?”

“I. Don’t. _Know._ ”

There was something wild in Entreri’s glare that said Jarlaxle was pushing too far, and for once, Jarlaxle heeded that. “Very well, _abbil_ ,” he said softly, hands palm out in surrender. “It’s fine not to.”

“I don’t need your permission,” Entreri snapped.

“I know.”

Jarlaxle remembered the rings they once wore, rings that let him feel what Artemis was feeling and vice versa, and he remembered what this mood had felt like from the other side: a tangled, defensive mess of fear and stress. Jarlaxle’s instinct was to reach out and soothe, but he knew Artemis was overstimulated and might lash out.

Entreri cooled quickly. “You are a pain in my ass,” he grumbled.

Jarlaxle’s smirk was wicked. “I _could_ be.”

The stoneskin spell was the only thing that saved him from the dagger stabbing him in the groin.

Dwahvel found them still sparring on the roof a half hour later, meaning to scold them for the racket they were making, the clatter of tiles over her chambers, the clang of metal, and the thudding of what she could only assume was a body hitting something. Instead she found herself watching them, a shawl shielding her face from the wind and grit.

Artemis had always moved with a tiger’s grace, but she had never seen him like this, tangling with someone who could match his pace, who could survive in a fight with him for more than a few seconds. It was almost a dance, the give and take, the way he twisted around Jarlaxle’s blade, dagger holding it wide as his sword thrust in underneath… only for Jarlaxle to wrap his other sword around Artemis’, diverting the tip and forcing Artemis to disengage before he could get stabbed in the shoulder.

“Getting tired, _mal’ai_?” Jarlaxle taunted with a laugh. Sweat gleamed at his temples under the hat, dusk painting his false gold curls a fiery orange, but he licked his lips, his grin all teeth.

Artemis chuffed, adjusting his grip on his sword. “I’m not the one talking as a stalling tactic.” His voice was low and rough, not mocking so much as… flirting? Dwahvel shivered, wondering crossly if that man knew the effect a voice like that could have on a woman. Or a drow, going by the look in Jarlaxle’s uncovered eye.

When the next bout turned to grappling and the grappling turned to kissing, Dwahvel opened and closed the door behind her loudly to announce she was there. Artemis leapt back from Jarlaxle as though spring-loaded.

“And here I was thinking you brought a yeti down south with you and were keeping it on my roof from the racket,” Dwahvel said. “I didn’t realize your foreplay was so… _rambunctious_.”

“Oh, my Lady Dwahvel, you have no idea,” Jarlaxle said with a wink. Artemis just looked disgruntled. Or was that what embarrassment looked like on his face?

“Apologies for the noise, Dwahvel,” he said, sheathing his sword and dagger. “We will be leaving once it is dark and were simply killing time.”

“I thought you were leaving tomorrow?” Dwahvel glanced at the horizon where the sun was already sinking out of sight. Her heart sank with it.

“There is a ship that will take us as far north as Athkatla. It leaves in the morning.”

Dwahvel nodded, bitterness a hard lump in her throat. “I suppose that is for the best,” she said, when what she wanted to tell him was not to go, not again.

Artemis opened his mouth to speak more but hesitated. He glanced at Jarlaxle, who sent him a gesture Dwahvel couldn’t read then tipped his head towards her. Artemis approached her, and just when Dwahvel had to start craning her head back to look at him, he dropped to his knees so she was looking down instead. She caught Jarlaxle’s smirk over Artemis’ head, his wink telling her he was thinking of their earlier conversation too. She pursued her lips, adjusted the fall of her shawl to obscure the way her cheeks were burning.

“I… wanted to thank you,” Artemis said. Hesitantly, he reached out and took her hand. His skin was rough but his touch surprisingly gentle. “I am not sure I ever did, not in person.”

“For what?” she said with a crooked smile. “For locking up Sharlotta? We all wanted to do that.”

Jarlaxle chuffed, but Artemis ignored him.

“For treating me like a person,” Artemis corrected. “For letting me see the ‘what if’. There are not many in this world I would call ‘friend’, but you were always the first among them.” He brought her knuckles to his lips before letting her go just as gently as he had grasped her hand.

Dwahvel just looked at him, at steel-gray eyes softened in a way she never thought she’d see. She squeezed her answer past the lump in her throat: “You’re leaving in the morning.”

“What?”

“Not like some thief in the night.”

“Well, technically, I am a—”

Dwahvel’s hand in his collar yanked him into a kiss. His stubble scratched, but his lips were soft. A study in contrasts, this man.

Artemis pulled back but not away, looking frazzled. He licked his lips. “I, um… I suppose we do have a few more hours…”

Jarlaxle grinned and clapped his hands like a child on Midwinter morning. “Delightful! Please tell me I’m invited?”

Dwahvel smirked, her hand still in Artemis’ collar, and she had to admit she liked the look of this, Artemis Entreri on his knees and at her mercy. “You might as well. I suspect we’ll be making a much different kind of racket either way.”

The next day found Artemis on the deck of the _Seahawke_ , arms braced against the railing as he looked out over an ocean that seemed to stretch to the edge of the world, where the line between blue sky and blue water blurred to simply “blue”. While he watched the water, Jarlaxle watched him, leaning backwards against the rail and wearing a small smile that was somewhere between affectionate and smug. Entreri ignored him, but that stare itched upon his skin.

“What?” he finally grumbled.

Jarlaxle’s grin stretched, leaning more towards smug. “Ask me how my stay in Calimport was.”

“No.”

“Ask me!”

“ _No._ ”

“Oh, come on!”

With a pained look, Entreri sighed and asked, “How was your stay in Calimport, Jarlaxle?”

“I’d come again, any time.”

Jarlaxle cackled, even through the punch to his arm that was a shade too hard to be teasing.

“You are a child,” Entreri grumbled.

“Hardly. Just enjoying myself with a child-like enthusiasm. And speaking of enthusiasm…”

“Don’t start…”

“I like her, your friend.” Jarlaxle sidled closer, slipping an arm around Artemis and feathering a kiss up the side of his neck just to feel him shiver. For all his scowling, Artemis pulled him in closer, bracketing Jarlaxle between his arms. “She knows what she wants.”

Entreri was about to respond but paused, sniffing the air. Over the spray of salt, the sharply sweet smell of jasmine was familiar but not from Jarlaxle. “Why do you smell like her perfume?”

“I liked it. She shared it with me. Isn’t sharing nice?”

“Subtle.”

“ _Honest._ ”

Entreri had likened Jarlaxle to a cat once, and the thought cropped up again, the way Jarlaxle burrowed against his side, enjoying the simple pleasure of Entreri’s body heat pressed to his.

“Were you worried that I would stay?” Entreri asked.

“Mm?”

“All the questions about what I want or what I am missing. I could have stayed with her.”

“You would have started a guild war.”

“I would have won.”

Jarlaxle chuckled, but he nodded. “I do believe that, actually. But, no.”

“You just knew I’d choose you over her?” Artemis drawled.

Jarlaxle laughed. “Ah, _mal’ai_ , you already did, years ago.”

It took Artemis a moment to realize what he meant, and then he sputtered. “That was a completely different situation! I had to run with you to stay alive!”

“And yet even after, when you _could_ have returned, you didn’t.” Jarlaxle smiled softly, fondly. “And, honestly, I figured this was my one chance to convince you to have a threesome, and I was right! Acting jealous would not have aided that.”

“How magnanimous of you,” Artemis drawled.

“Like I said: I _like_ her. I would like for that to not be the last time we see her.”

Artemis’ response died on his lips.

“She can visit, wherever we end up next. She _is_ capable of leaving the city as well, you know.”

“I do know,” Artemis said softly.

Jarlaxle sighed, just _looking_ at him again. “And do you know that this is all my roundabout away of asking: how are you?”

“How… am I?”

Jarlaxle’s hand stroked up Artemis’ side, his arm, as though hoping to soothe him in advance. “You have seemed to have fewer reservations with women than men in the past, but Dwahvel is different. The… dynamic was different.”

Entreri took a moment to think that over. There was a time where even standing this close to a man would have put him on high alert, let alone the thought of sleeping with one _and_ a woman. He brought a hand up to trace one pointed ear, smiling at the way that made Jarlaxle shiver. He was loath to admit it, but the damn fool was right: when given the option, Artemis would always choose him. There were things—ugly things—they both knew, they’d both seen, things Dwahvel may understand in the abstract but never truly _know._ It was a wonderful thing, he realized, to be _understood._

_“_ I’m well enough,” Artemis answered.

This time Jarlaxle’s smile was a warm, private thing. But a ringing bell interrupted his words, making his ears prick as sailors scrambled around them. “What does the bell mean?” Jarlaxle asked.

“Pirates.” Entreri tipped his head at the water, and when Jarlaxle twisted to look, it was to see black sails approaching amid the spray of foam.

Jarlaxle grinned. “Well, well, a good thing they brought us, don’t you think?”

“They have cannons, you realize.”

“I have toys too!”

“Yes, but theirs are bigger.”

At Jarlaxle’s smirk and arched eyebrow, Artemis rolled his eyes.

“Not like that.”

“I’ll have you know that my Wand of Magic Missile is perfectly proportional.”

“Not to a _ship_!”

“Well, of course not,” Jarlaxle huffed. “We don’t want to _destroy_ the ship!”

“…we don’t?”

Jarlaxle’s grin was all teeth as he ducked out from under Artemis’ arm. “Dream bigger, _mal’ai_ ,” he said as he drew a telescope from his hat. “Haven’t you always wanted your own ship?”

“No,” Entreri called after him as he disappeared into the crowd of sailors, but he knew Jarlaxle was not listening. He laughed helplessly, resigned to going along for the ride.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry this one took so long, guys. Life has kind of been a Lot the past few months, but I'm still working on this series. I'm not sure when the next one will be out because life is _still_ a Lot right now and I have to reread some stuff, but shit is about to get real for the boys.
> 
> Also, if there are typos, blame my cat Hela. She showed her support of my writerly pursuits by prancing across the keyboard. Which is great, because now I can blame her for all my actual typos.


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